2018 Proof of networking - Can blockchains boost the next generation of distributed networks

Last updated Dec 11, 2022

• Source zotero conference paper
• Type subject
• Status needs revision
• On networks
• On blockchain

Metadata

• CiteKey:: ghiroProofNetworkingCan2018
• Type:: conferencePaper
• Author:: Lorenzo Ghiro Leonardo Maccari Renato Lo Cigno
• Editor::
• Publisher::
• Series::
• Series Number::
• Journal:: 2018 14th Annual Conference on Wireless On-demand Network Systems and Services (WONS)
• Volume::
• Issue::
• Pages::
• Year:: 2018
• DOI:: 10.23919/WONS.2018.8311658
• ISSN::
• ISBN::
• Format:: PDF

Abstract

The recent explosion of interest in blockchains led to a plethora of proposals for their application, including attempts to decentralize some centralized network functions. At the same time, real “distributed wireless networks” are emerging. Community networks, for instance, are large mesh networks made of hundreds of nodes built by communities primarily to solve digital divide, and they are thriving. The challenges these networks face are not only technological: they deal with creating incentives to participate, with the business model they may adopt, and with their internal governance. Very few models have been proposed to apply blockchains to bottom-up distributed networks: we instead expose how they can solve many problems which so far hindered the diffusion of such networks. Maybe we can push this further: a network is, in essence, a system in which all nodes find a rough consensus on the best paths to connect a node with another. Can we use this consensus method to run a distributed ledger and a cryptocurrency within the network itself, rather than simply applying to networks the effects of a blockchain defined in a separate system? This paper introduces this concept, named “Proof of Networking”, and discusses its potential avails.

Files and Links

• Url::
• Uri:: http://zotero.org/users/5055703/items/2WFZG8NJ
• File:: ghiro_et_al_2018_proof_of_networking.pdf
• Local Library:: ghiro_et_al_2018_proof_of_networking.pdf

Tags and Collections

• Keywords:: Internet, Mesh networks, Peer-to-peer computing, Blockchain, Distributed Networks
• Collections:: PoN

• ["] The challenges these networks face are not only technological: they deal with creating incentives to participate, with the business model they may adopt, and with their internal governance. Page 1
• ["] A network is, in essence, a system in which all nodes find a rough consensus on the best paths to connect a node with another. Can we use this consensus method to run a distributed ledger and a cryptocurrency within the network itself, rather than simply applying to networks the effects of a blockchain defined in a separate system? Page 1
• ["] An ad-hoc network is in general imagined as a strictly local network made of a few (tens) portable devices, with some degree of mobility. Page 1
• ["] Android and iOS devices alone are more than 3 billions. Almost each of these is equipped with a modern Wi-Fi chip, and thus would virtually enable the creation of ad-hoc networks. However, this does not happen for a simple reason: The Operating System (OS) does not allow it. Page 1
• ["] A mesh network is instead imagined as a mainly static network made of wireless nodes covering areas that range from a house to a whole city. Page 1
  • ["] The most notable application of mesh networks are in all likelihood Community Networks (CNs). A CN is a (wireless) mesh created by a community of people, primarily to solve a condition of digital divide. Page 1
• ["] A thorough study in the more structured CNs [5] outlined negative behaviours that emerge regularly, we specifically consider two of them: the “dumping” and the “club of techies” problems.
  • ["] The first concerns, in a voluntary system, the struggle to nurture participation of people to maintain the system alive, which requires acknowledgement of the system’s value. Many people participating to CNs stop managing their node right after they turn it on, and let it degrade, as long as this does not directly influence their own experience. Page 2
  • ["] The second pattern describes the case in which a small number of tech-savvy people start building the network as a voluntary effort to solve their own problems. The network grows and the core group of maintainers can not cope with the effort needed to manage it anymore. Since the “club of techies” was never interested in delegating responsibilities to other (possibly non-techie) people, the network collapses. Page 2
• ["] In the context of distributed networked systems, it is clear that the network itself is the CPR (Common Pool Resource) and it is necessary to find a technically feasible and economically viable way to maintain it so that applications, where a market can be established, can flourish. Page 2

Page 2

• ["] Althea incentives peering agreements between nodes. Althea nodes do not mine blocks, they rather use an external blockchain (the Ethereum blockchain) with Micropayment Channels Page 3
• ["] The AMMBR blockchain instead is a dedicated immutable ledger to record pricing, metering, billing, payment, reconciliation, reporting and auditing. AMMBR uses a proprietary chip to replace PoW with the proof of Elapsed time (PoET). The PoET workflow implements a fair and random leader-election algorithm but seems to be depending on a centralized server that plays a key coordination role. Page 3
• ["] AMMBR and Althea introduce blockchains and transactions to foster an in-network marketplace. This can make local networks more appealing, as long as they enable Internet access and local services, but the blockchain and the network remain separate entities. Page 3
• ["] We can extend the scarcity problem, where most devices do not have Internet access, to a quality problem: most devices have Internet access but they have different quality (they use different operators or different generations of the wireless technology). Mobile devices could seamlessly choose which is the option that better suits their current need and perform a micro transaction to enable it. Similarly, devices could offer local services such as media sharing, proxy access to external services, on-line gaming and caches of software updates, and use transactions to enable them. Page 3
• ["] The blockchain, in the model described so far, is just an enabler of transactions, and it can reside outside the network itself. In other terms, it uses the network for communications but the transaction recording and the “proof” for them are independent from the network. The network only partly benefits from the presence of a blockchain, it mostly benefits from the presence of a currency and a way to inject it into the network. Page 3
• ["] A blockchain is a method to obtain consensus leveraging some sort of “proof": of work, of time elapsed, or any other proposed one. And what is an IP network? It is a system in which nodes need to reach a consensus on the way to go from node A to node B, and the proof is the delivery of packets: We have obtained a Proof of Networking (PoN). Page 3
• ["] If we take for instance a link-state routing protocol, it distributes information so that all nodes share the same view of the network graph. If this does not happen the network simply does not work, e.g., routing loops are created. Consider a mesh network, in which node A uses a link-state protocol with embedded cryptographic signatures, on the model of Secure-OLSR. Node A performs link-sensing with its neighbors and periodically floods signed TC messages (containing its active links) to the whole network. At network convergence every node should have enough information to know the whole graph topology, with the information on each link being cross signed by both endpoints. If this information is periodically “frozen” and agreed upon, it provides the “proof of networking” needed to quantify the value of the network and the contribution of individual nodes. Page 3
• ["] The required frequency depends on the scenario: once per day may be enough for a stable community network, while small ad-hoc networks built on the fly may require a much smaller interval. Page 3
• ["] This approach embeds the blockchain and the token-currency into the network, with direct benefits leveraging on the “network effect” and all the advantages induced by an integrated ecosystem. Page 4
• ["] Let’s analyze some possible features of a tokenized system:
  a) The amount of generated currency can algorithmically depend on the network evolution (as in the Bitcoin, where it depends on the total computing power), which fosters the network growth;
  b) Rewards can be delivered to all nodes proportionally to their importance in the network topology, and on the traffic they carry. This way nodes are incentivized to be central in the topology, thus routing a high quantity of traffic, and not remain leaf “free rider” nodes;
  c) Rewards should acknowledge collective behaviours, e.g. introducing a dependency between the number of tokens generated and the number of nodes added in past intervals;
  d) The network graph can be enriched with annotations that include other network parameters (forwarded traffic, uptime, list of supported services, . . . ) to represent a composite metric of contribution to the network value in multiple dimensions. Page 4
  ^8322ec
• ["] The value of the network infrastructure is finally quantified: It resides in the importance of nodes and in their contributions. If one does not put enough effort in the maintenance of his node, the whole network will loose some value and he will be tangibly affected. Conversely, maintaining a central node efficient rewards the owner with currency to be spent for access to Internet or other services, but requires effort to upgrade the node and make it work properly. Page 4
• ["] Currency does not necessarily mean real money. Virtual tokens, or any other currency used by a local community, can be used to quantify the work needed to maintain a node, and the value of services received. Page 4
• ["] Creating such a “proof of networking” is technically challenging, we can foresee at least three themes that must be carefully analysed. Page 4 ^e1229f
  • ["] The first is the specification of the PoN, of which we gave only a sketch. In fact, a network needs an “approximate consensus” to work, meaning that when the network changes, e.g. a link is removed, there is a transitory phase in which nodes may disagree on some pieces of information. While we accept potential service degradation before convergence of a routing protocol, degrading the security level of a system, even temporarily, could be catastrophic. To counter this, there exists a large body of research on mesh/ad hoc network security that can be exploited to meet this goal. Page 4
  • ["] A second theme is the size of the blockchain and of the amount of information to be flooded in the network. While improvements are emerging [12], their applicability to wireless routers needs to be tested. Page 4
  • ["] A third theme is the integration with routing. How do we ensure loop-free and stable routing when the routing metric does not only take into account the link quality, but also embeds the price of the transit for that link? And how can a node be sure that the service-level agreement that it negotiates with a peer is effectively enforced? Page 4